We have got to
travel in the void and be happy about it All that we
know clearly is insufficient. We must pass on to the unknown
at the
same time I think we make problems for us where there really are
none.
There is too much conscious "spiritual life" floating
around us, and we are
too aware that we are supposed to get somewhere. Well,
where?...perhaps
we are already in that where. As for "spiritual
life": our "Life in the
Spirit" is all-embracing, or it should be.
~Thomas Merton

by George Jisho
Robertson on Facebook

"I'm here.
I'm always here. Even when I'm 'there', I'm here.
I can't get away from here. Even when I try to escape here, I
find
myself here. Once I even managed to arrive 'there', but then I
took a
fresh look, and I was still here. Here follows me wherever I go.
It's just
always here, wherever I am. Hmm. Perhaps I am here. I mean,
perhaps I
*am* here! Perhaps here is what I actually am. That's why I'm
always
here..."
~Jeff Foster

Time wants to show you a different country. It's the one
that your life conceals, the one waiting outside
when curtains are drawn, the one Grandmother hinted at
in her crochet design, the one almost found
over at the edge of the music, after the sermon.

It's the way life
is, and you have it, a few years given.
You get killed now and then, violated
in various ways. (And sometimes it's turn about.)
You get tired of that. Long-suffering, you wait
and pray, and maybe good things come - maybe
the hurt slackens and you hardly feel it any more.
You have a breath without pain. It is called happiness.

It's a balance,
the taking and passing along,
the composting of where you've been and how people
and weather treated you. It's a country where
you already are, bringing where you have been.
Time offers this gift in its millions of ways,
turning the world, moving the air, calling,
every morning, "Here, take it, it's yours."

Awareness is the
ocean of existence.
Let it loose and your words will rage
and cause wounds like fishing spears.

But if you tend it like a fire
to discover the truth,
you'll find how much of that
there is in what you say. None.

- Lalla
14th Century North Indian mystic

From Along The
Way

The greatest help
or service you can do to the
world is the imparting of knowledge of the Self.
Spiritual help is the highest help you can render
to mankind. The root cause of human sufferings
is ignorance. If you can remove this ignorance in
man, then only can he be eternally happy. That
sage who tries to remove the ignorance is the
highest benefactor in the world.

- Swami
Sivananda

From Along The Way

"Despite what we might think much of the time and what the
news
programs imply, we all wish to be sane and open-hearted people.
We
could take our wish to be more sane and kind and put it in a very
large
context. We could expand it into a desire to help all other
people, to help
the whole world.

But we need a
place to start. We can't simply begin with the whole world.
We need to begin by reaching out to the people who come into our
own
lives-our family members, our neighbors, our coworkers. Perhaps
we are
inspired to enter a profession where we can spend our time and
energy
trying to help at a global or national level.

But even if we
express our wish to be open-hearted by working for
global peace or justice or environmental well-being, even on that
grand
scale, we need to work on what is immediate to us all the time.